I was thinking about writing a novel about what might happen if a man who hates America and wants to bring it down is somehow elected president. What would he do?

I sketched out a few plot elements, and you can decide whether this will fly.

First, the Trojan Horse president would initiate unprecedented spending, driving the debt up by more than $4 trillion just in the first three years. Much of the money would go into the pockets of political supporters and people who donate heavily to his campaigns.

He would ram through an unreadable law allowing the federal government to seize the health care system, which would transform citizens into beholden subjects.

He would cut out private lenders and federalize student loans.

He would go on a world apology tour, letting America’s friends and foes know that he is doing whatever he can to make sure America becomes a third-rate power and is brought to heel under a growing world government headed by the United Nations. While on the tour, he would praise Islam and denigrate America’s Christian heritage.

He would cripple America’s ability to be energy-independent by halting new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska - even projects that already had undergone years of research and approval. While promoting oil drilling by Brazil and other foreign countries, he would halt a pipeline from Canada’s oil tar sands that could create 20,000 U.S. jobs and reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

He would waste billions on “new” sources of energy that don’t have a prayer of sustaining America’s vast industrial and service industries. This means windmills, solar farms and acres of cages full of hamsters on wheels that generate electricity.

He would appoint a totalitarian-minded director of the Environmental Protection Agency to use global-warming hysteria to create carbon rules to shut down or bankrupt coal-burning electric plants and shackle manufacturers with hundreds of new regulations.

He essentially would end the space program, a main driver of America’s computer and other high-tech industries. First he would order NASA to “reach out” to Muslim nations.

He would hollow out the military by killing new weapons, reducing forces and letting our foes know exactly when America is leaving the field of battle, regardless of conditions.

To complete the job of destroying morale, he would orchestrate, with leaks and stacked surveys, an end to the military’s moral code, which has been in existence since the nation’s founding. He would brook no commander who held strong moral views and would appoint spineless bureaucrats to facilitate the new sexually androgynous armed forces.

He would alienate European allies such as Poland by yanking away a missile-defense system after the Poles already had committed to it and risked the wrath of neighboring Russia.

He would send his secretary of state around the world to promote abortion, homosexuality and anti-blasphemy dictums that stifle criticism of Shariah law.

He would use the Justice Department to undermine the rule of law. Here are some ways he could do that:

c Attempt to close down the Guantanamo Bay military prison and bring terrorist suspects into U.S. civil courts, where they could claim constitutional immunities.

c Reignite racial animosity by dropping voter-intimidation charges against radicals such as the New Black Panther Party thugs outside a Philadelphia polling place.

c Order his attorney general to flout the Constitution’s requirement to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed” by announcing that the administration will no longer defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act. While doing this, he would play coy with the media about his “evolving” views on same-sex “marriage” and facilitate homosexual activists’ other key goals, such as a federal hate-crimes law.

c Have the civil rights enforcement staff ignore voter-fraud allegations by citizens who happen to be white.

c Ignore blatant violations of immigration law by “sanctuary cities” while suing Arizona and threatening other states that dare to enforce federal laws against illegal immigration.

c Threaten states that tighten laws against voter fraud, such as requiring a photo ID. Without evidence, accuse them of trying to “suppress” the minority vote.

c Ship hundreds of taxpayer-purchased firearms to Mexican drug gangs in order to frame law-abiding gun sellers in Texas. When the Fast and Furious weapons are used to kill U.S. and Mexican lawmen, the attorney general will pretend he didn’t know about the program until very recently and is shocked, shocked! The attorney general will claim that critics of this criminally insane policy are motivated by racial animus against him and the president. After all, this worked when anyone questioned why the president’s college and medical records were sealed or why he attended a Marxist minister’s church for 20 years and hung out with known terrorists.

He would appoint Supreme Court justices who believe in a “living Constitution,” which means they can ignore its plain meaning when it interferes with their ideological agenda.

He would stack the National Labor Relations Board with union hacks who would do unspeakable things such as order a major company (Boeing) not to open a new factory in a right-to-work state (South Carolina) in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. If he got away with that, he would go ahead and strengthen a crony socialist system reminiscent of Mussolini’s Italy or Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela that subsidizes “winners” such as Solyndra.

Finally, throughout his tenure, he would employ the Marxist rhetoric of class warfare, blame “the wealthy” and make more Americans dependent on government checks. He would sucker Republican leaders into secret meetings and emerge to accuse them of wanting to raise taxes on all but the rich.

As I began to flesh out this novel, I decided it was a waste of time. Good fiction has to ring true to life, and the hamster part just won’t wash.

Robert Knight is a senior fellow at the American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times.